Have you seen the advertising campaign for Dos Equis beer featuring “The Most Interesting Man in the World”? Each commercial depicts exploits from the “interest MATT
THORNHILL
ing man’s” past, or he offers insight on a particular topic. For example, on the topic of “Life” he says, “It is never too early to start beefing up your obituary.“

There’s a style of painting called pointillism where the artist uses small dots of paint on the canvas. From a distance, you see the intended image, an apparent whole. But looking up close, EDWARD F.
ANSELLO
you can see thousands of individual dots of color, some big, some small, spread out all over the canvas. This is the picture of aging today.

Last week Stephen Moore of The Wall Street Journal wrote a column titled, “This Boomer Isn’t Going to Apologize,“ in response to an earlier report that “graduation ceremonies have become collective air ings of guilt and grief.“ It’s now chic, he said, “for boomers to apologize for their generation’s crimes.“ Moore was having none of it, and he made a provocative case that boomers have nothing to apologize for. He pointed out, “We’re the generation that spawned Microsoft, Intel, Apple, Google, ATMs, and Gatorade. We defeated the evils of communism and delivered the world from the brink of global thermonuclear war.“

First came the Super Bowl, then the Super Bowl ads, and then the hype over the Super Bowl ads that exceeded the hype over the football game. Then followed video streaming on the Internet, which inspired more replays of the ads than of the game highlights. In the past two or three years, Americans have taken yet another step toward the transformation of the championship football game from an athletic contest into a media phenomenon. Millions of us now view “Super Bowl” ads that don’t even run on the Super Bowl.

Christmas, as Charlie Brown has long understood it—and the Grinch, too, ever since his heart grew three sizes that fateful day—isn’t about the presents: It’s about so much more. We’re seeing the evidence in family rooms across America. Consumers of all ages are deciding that happiness on Christmas morning can’t be found in a big box store, and it can’t be wrapped up in pretty paper. Buying and owning more stuff provides no lasting satisfaction—only bigger credit card bills and a shriveled savings account. Americans of all ages are craving what money cannot buy: the rewards of friendship, family, community, and spirituality. Mass consumerism by the masses is dead.